Johns Hopkins Diet Programs

by
JIM THOMAS July 18, 2017

Jim Thomas

Jim Thomas has been a freelance writer since 1978. He wrote a book about professional golfers and has written magazine articles about sports, politics, legal issues, travel and business for national and Northwest publications. He received a Juris Doctor from Duke Law School and a Bachelor of Science in political science from Whitman College.

The center specializes in a modified Atkins diet that is low in carbohydrates and high in fats.
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Johns Hopkins, one of the premier names in medicine, has several innovative diet programs. One program is available to anyone who is overweight or obese. Two others are specialized programs for child and adult epileptics. Johns Hopkins has also published a 2010 white paper with valuable information for anyone who is looking for a high-quality weight-loss plan.

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Weight Management Center

The Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center in Baltimore was created with one goal -- "to improve your health." The program is centered around individualized care from a team of doctors, dietitians, psychologists and exercise physiologists. Research has shown that individual counseling, regular support group attendance and follow-up produces the most success for dieters.

Within the Weight Management Center are programs for kids from 8 to 12 years old and programs for those preparing for or recovering from bariatric weight-reduction surgery.

Patients are able, on the average, to lose 2 to 4 lbs. per week and drop 60 lbs. overall.

Adult Epilepsy Diet Center

Created by Johns Hopkins in 2002, the center specializes in a modified Atkins diet that is low in carbohydrates and high in fats. The diet has lowered the seizure rate in almost 50 percent of the patients within a few months. The diet is modified from the traditional Atkins diet in order to get more fats into the diet, which is a key to reducing seizures. As an added bonus, those on the diet can lose weight as well.

The Ketogenic Diet Center

The Pediatric Epilepsy team at Johns Hopkins has been helping infants through teens with serious seizure disorders since the 1920s. Seven hundred children have gone through the program, which now admits four new patients per month. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ketogenic diet is that no one, not even the experts at Johns Hopkins, really understands how it works -- "the ketogenic diet is as much art as science."

But it often works wonders, curing kids of multiple daily seizures who were not helped by anti-convulsive drugs or even brain surgery. The ketogenic diet is a special high-fat diet, featuring heavy cream, butter, and vegetable oils; no sweets; and low or no levels of carbohydrates. Foods are doled out by the gram in carefully calculated ratios. It's a very strict diet, and 50 to 75 percent of kids are helped by it.